MEETING THE DAVID BECKHAM BOY
In the middle of the afternoon, a boy of about eight comes in and flings a backpack in the corner. He has hair that sticks up like the tassels on a cornstalk and knees as knobby as a baby goat’s. He gives Pushpa a kiss on the cheek and tickles baby Jeena under her chin.
He notices me and points to his shirt. It has the number twenty-three on the back. “David Beckham,” he says.
I do not understand these words, but it is clear that this David Beckham boy is very proud of his shirt.
Shahanna says it is time for us to put on our makeup. Pushpa rises wearily, gives the baby a bottle, and puts her on a little bedroll under her cot. The David Beckham boy grabs a paper kite and runs off If I could speak his language, I would ask him if the night air in the city smells like the night air on the mountain, like rain clouds and jasmine and possibility.
EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW NOW
While Anita and Pushpa stand in front of the mirror, painting their faces, Shahanna explains everything to me.
Before, when you were in the locked room, Shahanna says, Mumtaz sent the customers to you. Now, if you want to pay off your debt, you must do what it takes to make them choose you.
Tell the customers that you are twelve, she says. Or Mumtaz will beat you senseless.
Do whatever the customer asks of you, Shahanna says.
Otherwise he will beat you senseless.
Then he will do whatever he likes and leave without paying.
Always wash yourself with a wet rag after the man is finished,
Pushpa says.
This will keep you from getting a disease.
If a customer likes you, he may give you a sweet, she says. You must eat it right away. Or Mumtaz will take it and eat it herself.
If a customer likes you, he may give you a tip. Hide it where no one can see so that you will have enough to buy yourself a cup of tea each day. Once a month, Pushpa says, a government woman comes to the back door with a basket of condoms. Take a handful and hide them under your mattress, but do not let Shilpa, the aging bird girl, see you; she is Mumtaz’s spy.
The Americans will try to trick you into running away, says Anita. Don’t be fooled. They will shame you and make you walk naked through the streets.
If an old man is at the door, bat your eyelashes and act the part of a little girl, says Pushpa. He will pay extra for this.
If Mumtaz brings you one of her important friends, bat your eyelashes and act the part of a little girl, says Shahanna. He will pay nothing.
There are special things you need to know about how to use your shawl, she says.
Flick the ends of your shawl in a come-closer gesture and you will bring the shy men to your bed, the ones who will slip an extra coin into your hand before they go.
Draw your shawl to your chin, bend your neck like a peacock. This will bring the older men to your bed, the ones who will leave a sweet on your pillow.
Press your shawl to your nose with the back of your hand, Pushpa says, when you must bring a dirty man to your bed. He will leave nothing but his smell, the stink of sweat, and hair oil and liquor and man. But you can use your shawl to block the worst of it.
Anita turns away from the mirror, transformed from a crooked-faced country girl into a tiger-eyed city woman.
There is another way to use a shawl, she says.
I cannot tell from her always-frowning face if she is being kind or cruel.
That new girl, the one in your old room, she says. Yesterday morning Mumtaz found her hanging from the rafters.
PRETENDING
Her coughing is so bad today that Pushpa cannot get out of bed, so we take turns playing with baby Jeena, tickling her, cooing to her, bouncing her on our knees. It is peaceful until Anita and the cook begin pinching each other’s ears over whose turn it is to hold the baby. In the midst of their fighting the baby begins to wail.
Pushpa rises wearily from her cot and takes Jeena in her arms. “You do not remember,” she whispers to her little girl, “but we used to have a proper home.” She opens her blouse and puts the child to her breast. But it is to no avail. There is no nourishment left in Pushpa’s withered body, and again the baby begins to cry.
Jeena is not the only baby here. Several of the women have children. They dote on them, going even deeper into debt with Mumtaz to buy them fresh clothes for school, hair ribbons, and sneakers. The others—the ones without children—treat them like pets, buying them sweets from the street boy when one of their good customers gives them a tip.
I ask Shahanna why this is so.
“We all need to pretend,” she says. “If we did not pretend, how would we live?”
“But why does Mumtaz go along with this?” “Only Mumtaz does not pretend,” she says. “She knows that once the women have children, they cannot leave. They will do whatever she asks, or be thrown out in the street.”
I ask Shahanna why the women don’t get the shots that will keep the babies from coming.
She looks at me like I’m mad. “All the girls want babies,” she says. “It’s our only family here.”
And so the children of Happiness House go off to school in the mornings and come home in the afternoons and do their homework. They play tag in the alleyway, eat sweet cakes, and watch TV But in the evening, it is harder to pretend. As soon as dark falls, the bigger ones go up to the roof. They fly homemade paper kites until they are too tired to stand, daring to come down to sleep only late at night after the men have finally gone. The younger ones, like Jeena, are given special medicine so they can sleep under the bed while their mothers are with customers.
Morning comes early for the children at Happiness House, and they beg for more sleep with dazed and cloudy eyes. It takes a great deal of coaxing to get them dressed in their school clothes to begin another day of pretending.
THE CUSTOMERS
They are old, young, dirty, clean, tall, short, dark, light, bearded, smooth, fat, thin.
They are all the same.
Most of them are from the city. A few are from my home country.
One day, a customer addressed his friend in my language as they left.
“How was yours?” he said. “Was she good?”
“It was great,” the other one said. “I wish I could do it again.”
“Me, too,” said the first one. “If only I had another thirty rupees.”
Thirty rupees.
That is the price of a bottle of Coca-Cola at Bajai Sita’s store.
That is what he paid for me.
MATHEMATICS
In the village school we were taught to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
The teacher gave us difficult problems, asking us to figure out how many baskets of rice a family would have to sell to buy a new water buffalo. Or how many lengths of fabric a mother would need to make a vest and pants for her husband and still have enough for a dress for her baby. I would chew on the ends of my braids while my mind whirred, desperate to come up with the answer that would spread a smile on her soft moon face.
Here I do a different set of calculations.
If I bring a half dozen men to my room each night, and each man pays Mumtaz 30 rupees, I am 180 rupees closer each day to going back home. If I work for a hundred days more, I should have nearly enough to pay back the 20,000 rupees I owe to Mumtaz.
Then Shahanna teaches me city subtraction.
Half of what the men pay goes to Mumtaz, she says. Then you must take away 80 rupees for what Mumtaz charges for your daily rice and dal. Another 100 a week for renting you a bed and pillow. And 500 for the shot the dirty-hands doctor gives us once a month so that we won’t become pregnant. She also warns me: Mumtaz will bury you alive if she sees your little book of figures.
I do the calculations.
And realize I am already buried alive.
MONICA
There is one girl here who gets the most customers. She is not the prettiest among us—she has a face like a fox and
pointy gray teeth—but she is the boldest. While the rest of us wait for the men to point in our direction, Monica trains her hungry eyes on them the minute they walk in the door.
She does not bat her eyelashes and act the little girl. She preens and struts and twines her arms around the men like a thirsty vine.
One night, I am alone with Monica. She is studying one of her beloved movie magazines, posing and puckering her lips like the woman on the page in front of her.
“I can teach you some tricks,” she says to me. Tricks to make the customers pay more.”
I am afraid of this thirsty-vine woman. I look at my hands folded in my lap, and say nothing.
“You think you are better than me?” she says. “Too good to learn my tricks?”
I am too afraid to even shake my head no.
“Hah!” She laughs mirthlessly, tossing her hair over her shoulder with a shake of her head. “I’ve earned nearly enough to pay down my debt,” she says. “In another month, I’ll be on my way home.”
I try to take in this idea—that Monica will soon be free— when a man comes into the room. He has city shoes on his feet and a gold chain around his neck. In an instant, Monica is at his side, winding her arms around him, like a snake.
And then they are gone, and I am alone to consider an odd and somewhat sour feeling: disappointment that the man did not choose me.
AN ORDINARY BOY
I have been watching the David Beckham boy, although I do not let on.
I know that the first thing he does when he comes home from school is to kiss Pushpa and tickle his baby sister.
I know that he sticks his tongue out when he is concentrating on his homework.
I know that Anita saves her bread for him since she cannot chew on her bad side.
I know that he has two favorite television shows: one where men kick a black-and-white ball around a giant green paddy field, and another where people try to guess the right answers to difficult questions so they can win a million rupees. And I know that he plays along with the millionaire show, because I saw him whispering the answers under his breath.
I know that he keeps his belongings in a tin trunk under his bed. And I know what’s in there—a rusty key, an empty bottle of hair oil, a plastic flower, and three gold buttons—because I peeked inside when he was at school one day.
I know, from all this watching, that he is just an ordinary boy.
But sometimes I find myself hating him.
I hate him for having schoolbooks and playmates.
For having a mother who combs his hair on the mornings she’s feeling well enough.
And for having the freedom to come and go as he pleases.
But sometimes, I hate myself for hating him. Simply because he is an ordinary boy.
WHAT IS MISSING NOW
I no longer notice the smell of the indoor privy.
And I long ago stopped feeling the blows of Mumtaz’s strap.
But today when I buried my face in my bundle of clothes from home, there was no hearth smoke in the folds of my skirt, no crisp Himalayan night air in my shawl.
I have been frugal with myself, not daring to unwrap the bundle more than once a day, for fear that it would lose its magic.
But today, it became just a rag skirt and a tattered shawl.
STEALING FROM THE DAVID BECKHAM BOY
It seems that the David Beckham boy runs a business here.
In the afternoons, he runs errands. The good-earning girls, the ones who are allowed to keep their tips, give him a list of what they want and send him out to the stores. I have seen him come back with movie magazines for Monica and Coca-Cola for Shilpa. Sometimes he just gets a smeary lipstick kiss on the cheek. But sometimes he gets a few coins for his troubles.
At night, he works for their customers. They yell for him, and he runs to the corner to get them liquor or cigarettes. Sometimes he gets nothing more than a pat on the head. And sometimes, if he takes too long, a slap across the face. But sometimes he gets a rupee or two.
When he thinks no one is looking, he hides his earnings in his little tin trunk.
In the afternoons, when he is out playing tag with his school chums or running his errand business, I steal from the David Beckham boy.
I do not take his money, though. I steal something better.
While the other girls are downstairs watching the TV, I take his brightly colored storybook and make it mine. I do not understand the words inside, and the pictures are queer and otherwordly.
But at least for a few minutes, I pretend I am in school with Gita and my soft, moonfaced teacher, and I am the number one girl in class again.
UNDERSTANDING ANITA
I ask Shahanna why Anita is always frowning.
“She is angry all the time,” I say. “Even when The Bold and the Beautiful is on TV.”
“Anita escaped once,” Shahanna says. “When the goondas found her, they beat her with a metal pipe.”
I don’t know this word goonda.
“The goondas are men who work for Mumtaz,” she says. “If you try to escape, they will hunt you. If they catch you, they will beat you. If you get a disease, they will throw you out in the street. If you try to get back in, they will beat you.”
I ask Shahanna what happened to Anita.
“The goondas smashed her cheek and her jaw. Now one side of her face is dead. She could not smile, even if she had a reason to.”
REMOTE CONTROL
Shahanna has explained that there is a box Anita uses to operate the TV If she pushes one button, the people inside get louder.
If she pushes another, they get quiet.
Sometimes, if Mumtaz has a headache, Anita pushes another button, and the TV people make no noise at all.
The most important button is the red one. This one can make the TV people appear. Or disappear.
Sometimes, I pretend that what goes on at night when the customers are here is not something that is happening to me. I pretend it is a TV show that I am watching from far, far away. I pretend I have a button I press to make everything go quiet. And another one that makes me disappear.
CAUGHT
One afternoon, I linger too long in my make-believe school, and the David Beckham boy catches me poring over his storybook.
I drop the book to the floor and wait for him to pull my hair or rap my knuckles.
But he just cocks his head to one side and stares at me. He steps close and stoops to pick up the book. He holds it out in my direction. But I turn my back to him and flee the room, pounding the floor with my heels as I go.
I hate him more than ever now.
For catching me at my make-believe game.
For seeing that I want his life for my own.
And for the pity in his eyes as he offered to share it with me.
POLICE
Tonight I saw a curious thing. Usually the men give their money to Mumtaz. What I saw tonight, as I came downstairs, was Mumtaz handing a fat roll of rupee notes to a man.
He was dressed all in tan, like the man at the border, and he had a gun on his hip. While the man was counting his money, Shilpa, the aging bird girl who spies for Mumtaz, spotted me and chased me away.
“Is that man a goonda?” I ask Shahanna.
“He’s worse,” she says. “He’s a policeman.”
I don’t understand.
“Policemen are supposed to stop people like Mumtaz from selling girls,” she says. “But she gives this one money each week and he looks the other way.”
I don’t understand this city. It is full of so many bad people. Even the people who are supposed to be good.
NO ORDINARY BOY, AFTER ALL
My new custom is to wait by the window each afternoon so that I can see the David Beckham boy coming home from school. That way, I can put his book back in its hiding place before he arrives.
What I usually see first is whatever he is kicking ahead of him—a lemon rind or a rotten onion from the trash heap. He pretends it is a ba
ll, like the black-and-white one on the TV show he likes so much.
Today when I see him, he has had the good fortune to find a rotten melon. Melons seem to be his favorite, since they make a wonderful mess when they strike the curb.
He is sticking his tongue out ever so slightly—the way he does when he is concentrating on his math—as he nudges the melon in and out of the ruts in the road. And so he doesn’t see the older boys—the ones who chase the pariah dogs with stones—waiting across the street from Happiness House.
I do not understand what they say to him. But they are smiling and tugging at the hem of his David Beckham shirt.
He offers them an eager smile and shows them how he can balance the melon on the tip of his toe.
They seem to be impressed. At least for a moment. Then they are pinching his ear and jabbing at his David Beckham shirt. I cannot understand what they say but I know the word they hurl at him again and again. It is a dirty word, one the customers yell when they are drunk or angry. They are calling his ama a whore.
The David Beckham boy looks furtively toward the front door, where Pushpa waits for him on the days she feels well enough. I duck inside, but not before I see him stuff his hands in his pants pockets and walk away leaving that sweet, rotten melon abandoned by the curb.
SOMETHING ELSE I KNOW ABOUT THE DAVID BECKHAM BOY
I know that lately, when he bends to kiss his ama each after-noon, he lingers longer than he used to.
I know that he is checking for a fever.
I know because I overheard Mumtaz telling Pushpa that if the fever comes back, they will all be out on the street.
YES
I am sitting on my bed, adding yesterday’s profits to the tally in my notebook, when the David Beckham boy comes in. My old yellow pencil is nothing but a stub, and I slip it up my sleeve so this boy who goes to a proper school and does his work with a proper pencil won’t see.
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